I raise a glass to this, which is reproduced on Mark Steyn's website.
1945 - 1985: Poem for the Anniversary
Sometimes,
walking for hours through the woods,
I don't know what I'm looking for,
maybe for something
shy and beautiful to come
frisking out of the undergrowth.
Once a fawn did just that.
My dog didn't know
what dogs usually do.
And the fawn didn't know.
As for the doe, she was probably
down in Round Pond, swizzling up
the sweet marsh grass and dreaming
that everything was fine.
***
The way I'd like to go on living in this world
wouldn't hurt anything, I'd just go on
walking uphill and downhill, looking around,
and so what if half the time I don't know
what for --
so what if it doesn't come
to a hill of beans --
so what if I vote liberal,
and am Jewish,
or Lutheran --
or a game warden --
or a bingo addict --
and smoke a pipe?
***
In the films of Dachau and Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen
the dead rise from the earth
and are piled in front of us, the starved
stare across forty years,
and lush, green, musical Germany
shows again its iron claw, which won't
ever be forgotten, which won't
ever be understood, but which did,
slowly, for years, scrape across Europe
***
while the rest of the world
did nothing.
***
Oh, you never saw
such a good leafy place, and
everything was fine, my dog and the fawn
did a little dance,
they didn't get serious.
Then the fawn clambered away through the leaves
and my gentle dog followed me away.
***
Oh, you never saw such a garden!
A hundred kinds of flowers in bloom!
A waterfall, for pleasure and nothing else!
The garden furniture is white,
tables and chairs in the cool shade.
A man sits there, the long afternoon before him.
He is finishing lunch, some kind
of fruit, chicken, and a salad.
A bottle of wine with a thin and beaded neck.
He fills a glass.
You can tell it is real crystal.
He lifts it to his mouth and drinks peacefully.
It is the face of Mengele.
***
Later
the doe came wandering back in the twilight.
She stepped through the leaves. She hesitated,
sniffing the air.
Then she knew everything.
***
The forest grew dark.
She nuzzled her child wildly.
Mary Oliver
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